by Ryan M Blanck

In 2007, filmmaker Werner Herzog gave us the documentary Encounters at the End of the World, in which he went to Antarctica to observe and capture life as it exists at the bottom of the globe.  In the film, which he also narrates, he says he didn’t go there just to “make another film about penguins.”[1] Instead, he focuses on the men and women who call the icy polar cap their home.  He interviews scientists and researchers and construction workers, each of whom has his or her own story to tell of what brought them to the coldest continent on the planet.  Some are there fulfilling lifelong dreams; others are running away from personal demons.  But together they make up a rag-tag, motley bunch of individuals assembled in a place like no other, and are worthy of having their stories told by one of the world’s great filmmakers.

A little over a month ago, my wife and I volunteered to chaperone my school’s trip to Disneyland’s Grad Nite.  Grad Nite is a nearly fifty-year-old Southern California tradition, a rite of passage of sorts for each year’s graduating class.  It brings together young adults from almost every high school within a several-hundred-mile radius for an all-night, PG-rated[2] party to celebrate the end of their high school career and the commencement of their adult lives.  Though I’ve been to Disneyland a couple dozen times, none of these trips could prepare me for what and whom I would encounter on that evening in early June.

We arrived at the school parking lot at around 6:30pm.  A sizeable crowd of students and a few of the other chaperons were already there.  The students huddled in groups small and large, many with Starbucks coffee or Monster energy drinks in hand,[3] as we waited for everyone show up.  When our designated departure time of 7:00 rolled around, about a hundred and twenty of us sat – some twitching uncontrollably from the caffeine-overload – on crowded school buses as we waited… and waited… and waited for the last couple stragglers to arrive.  Some fifteen long minutes later, the last two girls finally pulled in to the parking lot, being dropped off in a Porsche,[4] and were greeted with sarcastic applause from their long-suffering classmates.

We endured the hour-long bumpy ride to the Magic Kingdom, the noise from the open windows and the shouting and laughing students reaching rock-concert decibel levels.

The raucous din only grew louder as we exited the freeway and navigated the streets of downtown Anaheim toward the Happiest Place on Earth.  The normally well-marked route from the I-5 to the Disneyland parking lot was now obfuscated by temporarily erected signs with arrows pointing to nowhere.  We quickly found ourselves obviously off course.  Our bus driver was confronted several times by overweight parking lot attendants in brightly covered vests to be told he was going the wrong way.  After our second or third lap around the park, we finally encountered a merciful parking attendant who didn’t merely tell us we were in the wrong place, but told us how to get to the right place – the staging area for student-filled buses.

There must have been close to a hundred buses in the dark parking lot.  We waited for another brightly colored vest to make her way to our bus to give us the necessary wristbands and clear plastic bags.[5] After another wait – the reason for which was not entirely clear – our bus driver was allowed to take us to the actual drop off point.  We had been circling the park for the better part of an hour like a passenger plane in a holding pattern, and were finally given the green light to proceed to our final destination.  The bus drove along a narrow corridor with high fences and bright lights on either side.  Yet another bright vest greeted us at the designated spot and finally allowed us to disembark.  We were told to follow the long, brightly lit path toward the security check-point at the front gate of the park.  Students ran and chased each other at the beginning, but the sheer length of the path[6] got the best of them.  As my wife and I neared the end, we passed a good number of winded teenagers, some doubled over as they couldn’t sustain the sprinter’s pace they started with.

Coming around the last bend, we were greeted by a huge sign with flashing orange letters spelling out “Boys go left.  Girls go right.”  More Bright Vests were there to reiterate[7] those six ominous words and to be sure they were strictly obeyed on the threat of not being allowed into the park.  Passing through this point of no return, the pieces were now beginning to fall into place: the cramped school buses; the long waits in staging areas; the men and women in brightly colored vests barking orders and distributing identification wristbands; the long march down a secluded, but brightly lit corridor; and now the segregation of the sexes.  The Magic Kingdom had been transformed before our arrival into a totalitarian state.[8]

With the front gate of both Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure within sight, we had to pass through the final security check… the pat-down search.  I was instructed to stand with my legs apart and arms out to my sides while a Bright Vest checked my pockets and every other imaginable place a person might try to hide something found on the “forbidden items” list.[9] It lasted less than a minute, but I walked away feeling cheap and used.  He could have at least bought me dinner afterward.

After a few minutes of frantically scanning the sea of humanity, I found and rejoined my wife.  We met up with some of the other teachers and their spouses and made our way to Disney’s California Adventure for the “Blastoff!” pre-party.[10] As we walked through the park, our conversations were impeded by the six-track loop of bubble gum pop songs.[11] After our free dinner at one of the eateries in the park, my wife and I and three other couples of chaperons[12] got in line for some of our favorite rides: Soaring Over California, Toy Story Mania, and Mickey’s Fun Wheel.[13] The last of these rides – a giant Ferris wheel – looked and sounded harmless enough as the eight of us had to select which line to join: the one for stationary baskets or the one for swinging baskets.  Being young and adventurous, we chose the swinging baskets.  After all, what could possibly be frightening about a ride called Mickey’s Fun Ride?  Unlike regular Ferris wheel baskets that allow gravity to keep them level for a smooth, leisurely ride in a large, vertical loop, the swinging baskets were loose on a track within the larger wheel so that, as the Ferris wheel turned, gravity would cause the baskets to swing back and forth up to twenty or thirty nausea-inducing degrees.

We crammed all eight of us – probably a thousand pounds or more – into the basket as the ride operator closed the door and wished us a fun ride.  The next ten minutes were, for some in the group, the most terrifying moments of our lives.  We only made three revolutions around the Fun Wheel; the first and last excruciatingly slow trips were to let passengers on and off, the middle one was our only complete, uninterrupted loop.  During those trips around the axis of the Fun Wheel, our basket was in constant motion, swinging us back and forth as it slid along the track.  Those few minutes were filled with screams and shrieks like I’d never heard before.  Some of my colleagues – young adult professionals with advanced degrees – were reduced to whimpering, squealing little girls.

Our time in DCA went all too quickly, and our efforts to make it on the California Screamin’ roller coaster were thwarted as we were herded out of the park and across the way to join the masses in front of the Disneyland gate.  We found the “Chaperons Only” queue at the far end of the row of turnstiles.  To our surprise, there were several of our students in line with some of the other chaperons from my school.  Apparently these soon-to-be high school graduates[14] had turned over their admission tickets instead of their meal vouchers at the DCA eatery they had patronized earlier in the evening.[15] While I was demanding at least twenty dollars from each of them to escort them into the park, the other chaperons were a bit more gracious and did them the favor for free.

Once inside the Magic Kingdom, we were bombarded for the next six hours with the same incessant dance beat emanating from the four or five strategically placed dance parties.  There was no variation in the beat; it was the same two-two rhythm all…night…long.  These dance floors were located equidistantly throughout the park so that the moment we thought we had escaped the thumping sound waves of one party, we found ourselves just on the outer limits of the next.  There was no escape; the music varied slightly in tone and genre, but that throbbing, computer-generated beat made its way into every nook and cranny of the park.

In addition to the soul-killing muzak that flooded the park, there were two firework shows at 1am and 3am, waving spotlights, thirty-foot-tall LCD screens serving as backdrops to the dance floors, and flashing lights galore.  Flashing lights appeared to be en vogue this year at Grad Nite.  There were balloons with flashing lights inside, flashing headbands, flashing lightsaber-like toys; if a flashing light could be put into or onto something, it was for sale – at an absurdly high price – at any of the souvenir shops or street vendor carts.[16] It was a multisensory smorgasbord.[17]

The crowds inside Disneyland were at least triple the density of those in California Adventure.  Navigating through those crowds was like one giant, never-ending game of Red Rover.  Walls of unbudging humanity blocked our every move.  Holding my wife’s hand appeared to only present the students with the challenge of breaking through our hands to go past us.  My wife even questioned her own visibility on several occasions; were these teens physically unable to see her, or were they just too self-absorbed to notice?  As herds of students headed straight toward us, they made no attempt to side step us or move out of our way.[18] We would often have to go ten to fifteen feet out of our way to avoid being trampled on the streets of the Happiest Place on Earth.

Seeing as how we weren’t tied down by an hour-long shift in the Chaperons’ Lounge, we decided to brave the crowds and get in line for some of our favorite rides.  We spent the time from about 1:30 to 3:30am in line for Space Mountain, an indoor roller coaster that hurls you down the track in almost pitch-black darkness; the only exception to the darkness is the migraine-inducing strobe lights at the beginning and end of the ride.  We spent almost two hours in that line, but I’d imagine our wait time could have been about half an hour less if not for the line-cutters.  As the line switch-backed on the partially covered patio outside the ride, students constantly stepped over the chains to either meet up with friends or to simply step in front of half-comatose students who barely knew what had just happened.  In the distance stood two Vests who confronted maybe one in ten cutters and sent them to the end of the line.  The remaining ninety percent just went on chain-hopping their way to the front.[19]

The presence of chaperons with large glowing stickers didn’t seem to deter other discouraged behavior.  In the Space Mountain line – as well as others we were in – I witnessed what could probably best be described as soft core foreplay.  Couples – mostly, but not limited to, heterosexual ones – engaged in groping and kissing that I was brought up being taught should be saved for one’s wedding night.  I think it was more the movement of the line rather than the presence of their peers and chaperons that interrupted their pre-coital activities.[20] Had these slow-moving lines ever come to a complete standstill, some of these hormonal teens would have been rounding third and heading home.

In addition to these exhibitionists, but only slightly more tolerable, were the couples that seemed to rely on each other for physical support to remain in an upright position.  It may have appeared somewhat cute to see a girl resting her tired head against the arm or shoulder of her boyfriend, but some of these guys were holding onto their girls like they were trying to keep them from escaping.  In much the same way a dog pees on a tree to mark his territory, these dudes were marking theirs with what appeared to be borderline chokeholds on their girls.[21] They made their way through the entire line like this; the girl standing there with a look of either extreme exhaustion or boredom, while the guy stood behind her, draping as much of his arms and upper body as he could over hers.  It was like the cartoon caveman who clubs his woman over the head and drags her back to his cave.  I’m not sure for whom these displays of Alpha-maleness were being made.  Was it to show their girl who was in charge?  Or was it a sign of their masculinity for the rest of the world to see?

In that same Space Mountain line I came across and briefly made eye contact with perhaps the most pitiable soul I have ever encountered.  About forty-five minutes into the line we turned a corner and headed down the next switch-back.  About twenty yards ahead of us stood a Vest who was pointing a small flashlight at the ground.  There was a trash can obscuring my view, so I couldn’t see what he was illuminating.  I assumed he was there to discourage kids from jumping the chains and cutting in line.  But as we got to within feet of where he stood and where he was pointing the flashlight, we could see the real reason for his presence.  He was not there to curb the line-cutting – as made obvious by the rather bold students who did so well within his line of sight – but rather to shine his flashlight on a puddle of vomit left there on the ground at the base of the trash can.  The vomiter had come so close to making it into the trash can, but missed.  And now this unfortunate, minimum-wage-earning Vest had to stand there and shine his light on it to prevent people in line from stepping in it until a clean-up crew could arrive.[22]

Disembarking the Space Mountain roller coaster car, we returned to the openness of the park during the fourth watch of the night.  The onstage dancers were losing the bounce in their step, visibly obvious even from the distance we kept away from the dance parties.  The mass of humanity meandered at a much slower pace now, making it even more treacherous to navigate the streets of the park.  The last of the caffeine and sugar seemed to be working its way out of the bloodstreams of the students.  And rather than refueling, they seemed to opt for spending their money on the gaudy souvenir apparel.  Groups of people stopped in the middle of the walkway for the simple reason that they collectively had forgotten where they were headed.  In those last two hours every park bench and empty curb found itself filled with sleeping or dozing students; students in all sorts of contorted positions trying to make themselves comfortable enough for a few moments’ rest before the long walk back to the buses.[23]

The sky began to brighten with the rising sun at about a quarter to six.  With the coming of the new day came the time for the long march out of the park.  The buses were moved to the most distant parking lot owned by Disneyland after the students were dropped off, and it was to this far away location that we were all made to walk.  Tired, ragged, disheveled, we trudged on for what seemed to be miles toward the waiting buses.  Once perfectly sculpted hair was now frizzed or flattened.  Once perfectly applied make-up was now smeared and running down the cheeks.  Once perfectly pressed clothes were now wrinkled and sweat-stained.  There were thousands of us marching… and marching… and marching.  My wife and I tried to keep a slower pace so as to not be caught up in mob just ahead of us, but a second mob came up behind us, merging with the one in front of us, and swallowing us up in the process.[24] Some twenty minutes into our death march we encountered a large sign designating which colored wristbands were to go to which lot to meet their buses and their drivers.  Many in the crowd had either lost their wristbands or in their semi-comatose state failed to see the large sign with its large letters, so there soon formed a mass of students resembling lost puppies, wandering about aimlessly and some even whimpering in that lost puppy sort of way, just the right frequency to cross the line from cute to downright annoying.

After passing row after row of the purple-wristband buses, my wife and I finally found our own.  It was mostly full, as we had arrived about ten minutes after the designated meeting time.[25] By about twenty minutes past our ETD, all but two of the students belonging to our bus had shown up.[26] This extra twenty minutes of waiting, on top of not sleeping all night, on top of suffering caffeine crashes and withdrawal had turned normally very sweet, well-mannered young adults into the step-children on Evil itself.  With the proverbial steam coming out of their ears, at least half the students on the bus – the half that were still awake – were calling and texting the two fugitive girls.  Against the advice of their fellow busmates, several infuriated students left the bus to look for some sign of these girls’ appearance.  The two delinquents finally boarded the bus, greeted this time with boos and evil stares and swear words muttered just below the auditory threshold of the chaperons.[27]

The bus pulled out of the parking lot and made its way to the freeway.  As we headed north toward downtown Los Angeles, we were met by morning rush hour traffic, which most likely would not have been the case if those girls had arrived at the bus on time.  We bumped along over the pothole-ridden 5 Freeway on our way back to school.  The only sounds on this bus ride were the cool morning air coming in through the driver’s window and the murmur of a few semi-alert chaperons talking toward the back of the bus.  Within minutes of our departure, most students had assumed a fetal position and had fallen asleep.  But each bump and pothole we hit jarred me back to consciousness; there was no chance of sleeping till we got home.

Ryan M Blanck is the co-instigator of Supposedly Fun Things… and the author of the Letters to DFW blog project.

[1] Of the marching, surfing, or tap-dancing kind.  However, he was introduced by a researcher to penguins who displayed homosexual and even suicidal tendencies.[back]

[2] Disneyland is pretty thorough with their list of do’s and don’ts, and even more thorough in their enforcement of that list.  And yet, despite the long list of forbidden clothing and personal effects, the men’s restroom very near the chaperons’ lounge was filled with a very distinctive “forbidden substance” aroma.  Either there were some very gutsy kids smoking out right under the chaperons’ noses, or there is a real plausible explanation for those couple of blood-shot-eyed chaperons going back for thirds and fourths at the all-you-can-eat buffet in the lounge.[back]

[3] There was probably enough sugar and caffeine consumed in that parking lot to kill a small horse.  We chaperons commented to each other that these energy drinks would keep the kids amped up for a couple hours, but most of them would be crashing by midnight.  But not to worry, the people of the omniscient Disney theme park planned for this and were ready to sell more coffee and energy drinks to these strung out students at a 300% mark-up.[back]

[4] Maybe their thinking was if they showed up in a fancy car they would be forgiven for being late.[back]

[5] Everyone – chaperons included – were instructed to put all personal effects into the clear plastic bags for the forthcoming security check.  The security guards we would soon be facing would be searching our persons and plastic bags very carefully for contraband items.  It seems that Mickey’s Gestapo are assuming a high degree of stupidity on the part of the students if they think the graduates who are trying to smuggle in contraband are going to place it in these bags.[back]

[6] I’m not the best judge of distance, especially on foot, but I would guess it was at least half a mile.[back]

[7] Or perhaps read the words to the illiterate.  I know all the students attending Grad Nite are soon-to-be high school graduates, but as a teacher I also know the state of California’s public educational system.  It wouldn’t surprise me, given both California’s ranking in national reading test scores and the Mouse’s propensity for thinking of and preparing for every possible contingency, if part of the reason for those particular bright vests to be near the sign was to read the words to students who couldn’t read for themselves.[back]

[8] I teach a unit on Holocaust literature, focusing specifically on Elie Weisel’s memoir Night, in my 10th grade English class.  The word “selection” now seemed to hang forebodingly above our heads.  My pulse and blood pressure began to rise.  I wanted to grab my wife’s hand and run back to the buses, but alas she had been pulled along with the crowd to the girls’ side of the split in the road.  The only thought, as I too was pulled by the crowd of boys and men toward the security check-point, was I wished I could have told her one more time that I loved her.[back]

[9] I had flashbacks to my first real physical.  I was in the fifth grade, and when the doctor came to that part of the check-up, I was caught unaware.  I later learned that it was routine part of the exam, but that only slightly eased the feelings of shame.[back]

[10] Blastoff! is a rather exclusive, by invitation only event for the “good” schools that starts at 9pm and goes until the gates to Disneyland are opened at about 11:30.  The crowds are much smaller and the lines are much shorter.  If you do it right, you can go on just as many rides during these two-and-a-half hours in DCA as you can during the six hours in the sardine can of Disneyland.[back]

[11] Try as I may to ignore it, I left the park with Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” holding my brain hostage.  It would be weeks before I could break free from that song’s clutches.[back]

[12] The ironic paradox of being a Grad Nite chaperon is that you are there to help Mickey’s Gestapo supervise the teens in attendance, and yet the unspoken goal of the evening is to see your students as little as possible.  If you do see them for more than a passing wave or high-five, it is probably because the kid did something stupid.[back]

[13] It occurred to me that being part of a group of eight chaperons had the potential of creating a rather awkward conundrum.  A few weeks before Grad Nite, our lead chaperon had asked for all of our cell phone numbers to give to the Mickey Gestapo.  If a student from our school got into trouble, or became ill or injured, the MG would begin calling numbers until they got a hold of one of us.  Not that we anticipated any calls as we wandered the park together, but if one of our phones were to ring, I’m sure it would have been met with laughter as the unlucky couple would have to go find the student who interrupted our fun.

This use of cell phones by the MG to reach chaperons replaced the previous years’ system of having each pair of chaperons serve an hour in the Chaperons’ Lounge in one of the restaurants on Main Street.  Here chaperons enjoyed an all-you-can-eat buffet while listening for their school’s name to be called over the loud speaker, signifying that one of their students was either ill, injured, or in trouble.  Aside from an occasional belly ache brought on by too much junk food followed by a rough-riding roller coaster, our chaperons were almost never called into duty.  Instead, we filled our time keeping a tally of the other schools as their names were called.  This running list was passed from one chaperon to the next with each changing of the guard.[back]

[14] One of whom had asked me several months prior to write him a recommendation letter to accompany his application to Harvard. He didn’t get in.[back]

[15] An innocent mistake, really.  After all, aside from the bold, block letters that say either “ADMISSION TICKET” or “MEAL VOUCHER” the two slips of cardstock paper are practically identical.[back]

[16] Also for sale to the graduates – at ridiculous mark-ups – were a menagerie of hats, head pieces, and assorted accessories.  There was a wider than usual selection of Mouse Ear hats, t-shirts, and over-sized sunglasses.  They sold graduation caps with Mouse Ears, reggae hats with dreadlocks and Mouse Ears, hats with flashing Mouse Ears, the whole gamut.

It appeared the only genuine appeal to these items was the number “2010” printed on them.  These hats and various paraphernalia have no use or appeal outside of Disneyland; at least 98% of the young people there that evening wouldn’t be caught dead wearing those hats, glasses, or glowing headband in the real world.  And yet the shopkeepers and street vendors couldn’t restock the shelves fast enough to keep up with the demand.  I can only imagine the brainstorming sessions in those product development and marketing meetings.  They must have geniuses working for them if they can design and create such completely useless kitschy crap and make it attractive enough for teenagers to shell out gobs of money for it.[back]

[17] At the center of the park, right in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, was the largest of the PG Rave parties with several ginormous LCD screen backdrops.  But as we approached the center square, in the midst of the Technicolor overload, we could just make out the iconic statue of Walt Disney holding Mickey Mouse’s hand, and with the other hand reaching out to the unknown future.  In broad daylight the statue is almost inspiring.  But in this new context, against the backdrop of flashing lights and thumping dance music, it made me wonder if this was the future Mr. Disney envisioned.[back]

[18] The 4”x6” neon-colored, glow-in-the-dark Chaperon sticker on the fronts of our sweatshirts seemed to make no difference in our ability to be seen by others.[back]

[19] One of the responsibilities of the schools’ chaperons was to help dissuade this and other unruly behavior.  The MG wanted us out in the park and in the lines in hopes that our presence would help keep the kids’ behavior in check.  The fact that I was nearly twice their age and had a large Chaperon sticker on the front of my shirt seemed to make no difference to these line cutters.  And the fact that some of these dudes – and even a few of the girls – were nearly twice my size made all the difference to me.  As annoyed as I was, I was not about to confront one of these dudes who cut past me and my wife.  Taking the moral high ground and blocking the way of these line-cutters was not worth the possible black eye or bloody nose such a confrontation might cost me.  Call me a coward if you will, but my health and dental insurance are not that good.[back]

[20] This is another reason for the goal of chaperons trying to avoid their own students.  No one wants to see that bright, charming student from third period English class getting it on with his girlfriend.  I don’t want that to be the last mental image I have of my students before I see them graduate.[back]

[21] Every once in awhile I’d catch out of the corner of my eye one of these dudes letting his hand “slip” so he could cop a feel.  This was usually followed by a kiss on the cheek or behind the ear, as if to make the subtle groping more acceptable.[back]

[22] At the beginning of each school year, I give my pep talk about how important it is for students to take their studies – and my class in particular – very seriously.  With the start of each new school year comes the chance to start fresh.  Forget past failures and focus on doing well now.  I tell them that the more education they receive, the more opportunities will be available to them in the future.  I tell as an example the story of the four weeks I spent a couple months after graduating high school working at McDonalds while I tried to figure out what I wanted to with the rest of my life.  I tell them about how miserable I was and how demeaning the work was and how that experience motivated me to go to school and get a degree – or two or three – so that I would never have to work in a fast food restaurant again.  After seeing that sad young man holding his flashlight over a puddle of fresh vomit, I think I have a new example of what I don’t want my students’ lives to become.[back]

[23] These students crashing on benches and curbs meant fewer people in lines for the rides.  Between the hours of four and six in the morning was the best time to go on rides.  We walked right onto a number of popular rides like The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean.  In fact when we went to ride The Haunted Mansion, we had to wait a good ten minutes for enough people to show up for the ride attendants to open the doors to the elevator that takes you down to the ride itself.  And we probably could have ridden several loops on most of the rides because there was hardly anyone waiting in line for us to get off of the ride.[back]

[24] I wonder how these thousands of tired teens and adults must have appeared to an outside observer.  We must looked and even felt like a mass of refugees fleeing their homeland, forced to cross a barren desert or a desolate war-torn countryside to escapes murderous persecution.[back]

[25] General rule for group outings: It doesn’t matter how late you are in getting back to the bus as long as you are not the last to arrive.[back]

[26] Ironically, but not surprisingly, it was the same two girls who were late arriving at the school before we left.[back]

[27] I heard some of it, but was far too tired to care. And besides, I was thinking the same things, but they were actually saying them aloud.[back]

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